Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) told MassDevice.com in an exclusive interview today that the medical device industry should press lawmakers in the upper chamber for a "real vote" on the medical device tax – and not settle for symbolic gestures like the non-binding repeal amendment his former colleagues passed late last week.

"You can take non-binding votes ’til you’re blue in the face," Brown told us. "It’s very easy to say you’re not in favor of the medical device tax. It’s very easy to take a vote that has no bearing whatsoever. When it gets hard is when you have to take a vote where the rubber meets the road."

Last Thursday, the Senate voted 79-20 in favor of a bipartisan amendment to repeal the medical device tax. The non-binding measure, proposed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), was part of the Senate’s continuing budget resolution.

Brown, who lost a re-election bid in Massachusetts to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last fall, said there had been talk of passing a non-binding resolution to repeal the 2.3% excise tax during his tenure in the 112th Congress. Even then, Brown said, it was a symbolic gesture meant to provide cover for lawmakers when they were back home in their device-heavy districts. Warren, he urged, should take up the issue for a vote immediately.

"I know the difference between a fluff vote and a real vote," Brown told us. "It means nothing. When you repeal a tax, you have to go and find another $30 billion – when you can’t even find $85 billion for sequestration. That’s where the tough votes are. If I were in the medical device industry, I would demand that they take the real vote."

There was real momentum in the Senate to get the tax repealed last year, he added, until Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blocked the vote.

"We could have gotten rid of it toward the end of the last session, but Harry Reid wouldn’t move forward," Brown said. "We came very close, but it came down to politics, really, because I was up for re-election and they didn’t want to give me a victory."

Brown, now a frequent contributor to Fox News, recently joined Nixon Peabody LLP as counsel in the firm’s Boston office, specializing in business and government affairs.

The former senator isn’t the only politico to offer thoughts on the Senate’s repeal vote. Yesterday House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized the Senate vote, telling State House News Service that her colleagues in the upper chamber spent 3 years criticizing her for lowering the tax during the drafting of the Affordable Care Act.

“This was a compromise, and the Senate was not happy with me because I lowered the amount by half, and that was a fair thing to do,” Pelosi told the news service. “I don’t know what the House will do, but it’s interesting that the Senate that had the bigger number that criticized us for cutting it in half are now eliminating it.”